Abstract

In the preface of Boccaccio's Genealogia it is possible to identify an apologetic tone which reveals the author's intention (but, at the same time, his regret) to change his own attitude and perspectives towards literary work, as compared to his previous production. The scholarly literary work can now be offered to the Prince as a prestige gift and can grant the artist the success and social achievement that could not be granted by literary works before. In this perspective, the biography of Boccaccio - on the model of Petrarca - becomes a specimen of the humanistic tradition in which the intellectual is detached from the society within which he lives.